Yes, I was actually there, and the beginning is at the bottom

Sake going in the mail. It looks nice bundled up.

This is Busan, I watched him filming the water for a long timeLine of smog or just weather, I don't know. Leaving Beijing in any case.
Our hutong.
Another blue day.
Lights and light.
Local market near the Hutong.
Yellow roof with animals.



This tree was formed into the character for man.

Preparing the red star for flight.

The park outside the Temple of Heaven, there were no children but every person there was dancing or kite flying or yo-yoing or something.
Tai Chi on the sidewalk, to music of course, early morning.
Peking duck! And cooked cucumbers, and braised mushrooms my oh my...

The highway from the Great wall, I like the way in winds.

It goes on and on.
The Great Wall, a very very blue sky that day. We couldn't stop talking about it.
The drive to Jinshanling.
Philly needs this pop-up bike shop.
Water and clouds and stairs.
A bunch of people looking at I don't know what. That happens a lot.
Red and yellow and a little green
Peony
A painted ceiling in the Forbidden City. I believe these colors have meaning.
Sleeping cat back in the Hutong where we stayed. Hutong are crazy networks of alleyways. They are all being demolished for new high rises, a lot of them don't even have modern plumbing. The government spray paints a mark that means pack up and move out.
For the third time, this time with a matching shirt.
Cloud
Tiananmen Square, big and bright and almost unbearably sunny that day. Huge national pride video playing on a loop.


Museum by day, archeological site by night.



Terracotta warrior pits, which themselves, were more interesting than the constructed statues.

Muslim quarter, bread and lamb soup, one of the best things I have ever eaten. People sat for a long time breaking their bread into tiny pieces before the meaty broth was poured over.

Julianne walking after Chickens.


Bird market.

A mop drying in the tree.

Xi'an was dry, dusty and hot

I thought this was very nice, just sitting there.


Chinese tourists.
We rode around the entire wall on bicycles, this is for you, Julianne.

The wall in Xi'an
Trees by the river, with some very beautiful lights strung in them.

We watched an old man closing the wide door to his shop, one panel at a time. We had wonderful milk tea and fried bread dipped in sweetened condensed milk.

A bakery of the Ancient Street in Tunxi. We bought little wooden frog shaped and sounding instruments.
This man asked to take a picture with me.
Couples lock locks to chains at the top of the mountain. They do it so their love will last forever. Men and women also climb to the top on high heels and business suits.
Mountain.
Pink Flowers!
People standing at the edge in the morning.
Julianne watching the cloud sea at sunrise.
This is how everything gets up down and around the mountain. Even people, who can be carried on chairs.
A bamboo forest. The wind blows, and the trunks knock against one another, and all the dry yellow leaves were rustling, it was tall and moving and making sound.


Dragon Heart Pool. We climbed a lot of stairs to get here.
Climbing Huang Shan.
The water town, I have to find the name, old old old and crumbling and increasingly more interesting as we walked. we got hoodwinked at a temple here, and I bought some red shoes.
Moganshan 50, Justin, this wall made me think of you.



We didn't actually eat any strawberries, but they were beautiful and everywhere.
A man pushing a cart of orchids.
Huge loads on small bikes.
The streets.
Docking in Shanghai, a little set of stairs being lowered to the ground. And I just remembered the strange memory, of being videotaped as we disembarked, and then again when we got off the bus at the terminal.
Our second day at sea, the horizon is just a blurry line, I spent much of the day on my tatami mat, being rocked. next to the sleeping woman of course.
The bar on the boat, karaoke, we were begged to sing Country Roads.

the boat deck, going past many tiny islands in the sea of Japan

i haven't been able to catch it yet

but there are moments when the sun shines through the canyons that are so stunning.

yesterday, I was driving down the highway, and the sun was right behind the grand, at least that's where it was where i was sitting. sitting in my car, and moving. so this moment didn't last too long, but the light was streaming down on either side of the mountain. golden, transparent beams reaching down and illuminating a patches of ground. brilliantly lit patches of green below the big, dark looking mountains.

and then i was going down the drive, watching my dust cloud in the mirror, also illuminated in a beautiful way, because at that time of day, the light, so me is the entire space around us.

i need to get it on camera, i know, but it is not as easy as it sounds, to see the beams of light, and their bright anchoring patches of ground. it is strange to think about the light hitting the ground and being absorbed, and/or reflected back up, to make those parts glow.

this happens around 8:40 pm, mountain time.

i still haven't written much about china. It started with a boat ride, past many tiny islands in the
Sea of Japan. When we woke up the next morning, the sea was gray, and so was the sky, and there was so much mist that there was no horizon. it was wavy, we were just bobbing up and down in this nothing space. the tatami room was small, and each woman was about 5 inches from the their neighbor. my neighbor didn't rise from her tatami mat the entire 2 day journey. I was next to the window on one side, and the laying-down woman on the other.

We got to Shanghai, and we ate noodles that were pulled into form right in front of us and then dropped into a steaming vat of broth and sprinkled with coriander.

We walked the Bund, which oddly shuts down at night. All the lights do away, and you can hear the low chug chug of barges, their low, large dark heaviness moving where lights were floating an hour ago. We wandered the markets, they were selling eyeballs and beautiful blue eggs and cucumbers that must have weighed 10 pounds.

We drove (were driven, rather) the a water town, that was a 1000 year old network of alleyways along a canal. it was crumbling, and we were hustled by people that were at least dressed as monks for money after they told us we were all going to have great luck.

we went to the contemporary art district, Moganshan 50? A bunch of old warehouses turned studio/gallery space. walking up to it, you pass a long wall covered in graffiti, above it identical high rises one after the other, the same smoggy beige color as the sky.

after three days wandering Shanghai, we got on a bus to go to Huang Shan (the Yellow Mountain), tall and cloudy. The bus honked at anything that wasn't going fast enough. Three wheeled mini trucks, horse drawn carts, a man carrying a stick with a bundle tied to the end. A woman, sitting on a heap of garbage on the back of a blue truck.

more tomorrow.

it has

been so bright here. i watch the dust clouds float and settle as people come down the drive. the mountains look far and hazy. the sky is bright blue, and itself, reflective. the birds shadows, pass over me as i step up onto the porch, harsh, and fast shadows in the bright, bright light.